Brian Rix
Brian Norman Roger Rix, Baron Rix was an English actor-manager, who produced a record-breaking sequence of long-running farces on the London stage, including Dry Rot, Simple Spymen and One for the Pot. His one-night TV shows made him the joint highest paid star on the BBC. He often worked with his wife Elspet Gray and sister Sheila Mercier, who became the matriarch in Emmerdale Farm.
After his first child was born with Down syndrome, Rix became a campaigner for disability causes, among others. He entered the House of Lords as a crossbencher in 1992 and was president of Mencap from 1998 until his death.
Biography
Early years
Rix was born in Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire, the youngest of four children. His father, Herbert Rix, and Herbert's two brothers, ran the shipping company Robert Rix in Hull, founded by his grandfather. Rix had an interest in cricket and only wished to play for Yorkshire in his childhood. He did play for Hull Cricket Club when he was 16. When he was being educated at the Quaker Bootham School, York, his ambitions changed.His elder sister Sheila became an actress during his school days, and Rix himself developed the same ambition to go on the stage. All four Rix children had become interested in the theatre because of their mother, Fanny, who ran an amateur dramatic society and was the lead soprano in the local operatic society. All her children performed in the plays and two of them, Brian and Sheila, became professional actors. Sheila Mercier, as she became known, played Annie Sugden for more than 20 years in the Yorkshire TV soap opera Emmerdale Farm having worked regularly with her brother in the Whitehall farces in the 1950s and 1960s.
Actor-manager
Rix became a professional actor when he was 18, on deferment from service with the Royal Air Force, with Donald Wolfit's Shakespeare Company. After only four months as a professional actor, he played Sebastian in Twelfth Night at the St James's Theatre in London. His deferment was extended and he gained his first weekly repertory experience with the White Rose Players at the opera house in Harrogate. From there he went into the Royal Air Force, eventually ending up as a volunteer Bevin Boy working down the coal mines near Doncaster.After the war, Rix returned to the stage, forming his own theatre company in 1947 as an actor-manager, a career he was to pursue for the next 30 years. He ran repertory companies at Ilkley, Bridlington and Margate, and while at Bridlington, in 1949, he found the play that was to bring him notice – Reluctant Heroes, later adapted for a film version. In the same year, he became engaged to Elspet Gray, an actress in his company, and six months later they married. They were together, domestically and professionally, for 64 years, until her death in February 2013, appearing alongside each other in many of the television farces, a radio series and three of the theatre productions.
In 1950 the newly-weds toured together with Reluctant Heroes until Rix managed to persuade the Whitehall Theatre management that this army farce was the ideal play to follow the long-running Worm's Eye View. It was a happy choice, for Rix's productions ran there for the next 16 years, before he moved to the Garrick Theatre, breaking many West End records in the process. His farces for BBC Television also began at the Whitehall, enlarging Rix and Gray's profile as well as that of the Whitehall Theatre.
During the next 18 years, Rix presented more than 90 one-night-only television farces on the BBC. These were often presented at Christmas or on other bank holidays with viewing figures often reaching 15 million. In the early 1960s, Rix was the highest-paid actor to appear on BBC television. Alongside the regulars from his theatre company, Rix appeared in these TV productions with such names as Dora Bryan, Joan Sims, Ian Carmichael, John Le Mesurier, Patrick Cargill, Fabia Drake, Sheila Hancock, Warren Mitchell, Thora Hird and Francis Matthews. Only a handful of the televised farces remain in the BBC archive, however. Rix also appeared in 11 films and though he felt these were less suited to his talents as a farceur, these also met with some box-office success.
Whitehall Theatre (1950–1966)
Reluctant Heroes, the first Whitehall farce, was by Colin Morris, later known for his dramatised television documentaries. During the four-year run of Reluctant Heroes at the Whitehall, Rix also sent out national tours of the play, generally with John Slater playing the dread Sergeant Bell, and always playing to packed houses. To give some sense of its popularity, at one time Rix had the play running at the Whitehall, three tours on the road and the film on release. Rix himself played the gormless north-country recruit, Horace Gregory, in both film and throughout the four-year run at the Whitehall, where his reputation for losing his trousers began. He subsequently lost them at least 12,000 times in the 26 years he was on stage in the farces; though he lost them less in the TV plays.In the first two years at the Whitehall, Rix's understudy was John Chapman, who also played a small part in Act 3, which ensured a long wait in the dressing room. To occupy his time, he began the first draft of the play that was to follow Heroes. Dry Rot, later filmed, was produced in 1954 with John Slater, Basil Lord and Rix himself in the cast and ran for nearly four years. When Dry Rot went on tour with John Slater in the lead, he was joined by two young actors, Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton.
Both became involved in Rix's next production at the Whitehall, Simple Spymen and had time to draft One for the Pot, which followed Simple Spymen. In all, seven playwrights were spawned by the Whitehall farces – Colin Morris, John Chapman, Ray Cooney, Tony Hilton, Clive Exton, Raymond/Charles Dyer and Philip Levene. Other writers of note who worked for Rix on television included Christopher Bond, John Cleese and Barry Took.
Ronald Bryden wrote of Rix and his company in 1964 after the opening of the fifth Whitehall farce, Chase Me Comrade:
There they are: the most robust survivors of a great tradition, the most successful British theatrical enterprises of our time. Curious that no one can be found to speak up wholeheartedly for them – no one, that is, outside enthusiastic millions who have packed every British theatre where they have played.... It's particularly curious considering the current intellectual agitation for a theatre of the masses, a true working class drama. Everything, apparently, for which Joan Littlewood has struggled – the boisterous, extrovert playing, the integrated team-work, the Cockney irreverance of any unself-conscious, unacademic audience bent purely on pleasure – exists, patently and profitably at the Whitehall. Yet how many devout pilgrims to Stratford East have hazarded the shorter journey to Trafalgar Square to worship at the effortless shrine at the thing itself? How many Arts Council grants have sustained Mr Rix's company? How many Evening Standard awards went to Dry Rot? How many theses have been written on the art of Colin Morris, John Chapman and Ray Cooney? The time has come surely to fill the gap.
Despite being described by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times as "The greatest master of farce in my theatre-going lifetime" and numerous other plaudits from critics and audiences alike, no theatrical awards were ever forthcoming. Rix was always philosophical about his lack of recognition, accepting it as the fate of so many low comedians before him. Nevertheless, Rix and his company broke the record for the longest running farce team in London's West End. In 1961 he gave a glass of champagne to every member of the audience who had watched Simple Spymen. The drink was served by many of the popular actors who had been with Rix in one of his productions – on stage, on television and in films – and was to celebrate the Whitehall Theatre team passing the record held by the Aldwych Theatre team. The Aldwych farces ran for 10 years, seven months and four days, while Rix went on for another 16 years. Rix also had a particularly long and fruitful relationship with the director Wallace Douglas and with the set designer, Rhoda Gray, who created the setting for practically all of Rix's productions, both in the theatre and on TV. The Whitehall was particularly small and cramped and Rhoda's designs overcame the most difficult of obstacles.
Rix made a series of films that were distributed by Rank and British Lion.
Post-Whitehall (1967–1977)
In 1967, Rix moved on to the Garrick Theatre after the Whitehall Theatre lease expired. The larger stage gave him the opportunity to try his repertoire scheme. This was a similar idea to the way plays were presented at the National Theatre – that is several productions, each one being played on different days or weeks, thus giving the actors the chance to play a variety of roles – or even to have a night or two off. Rix tried with three farces – Stand By Your Bedouin, Uproar in the House and Let Sleeping Wives Lie – but as this was a commercial venture, without any state subsidy, it proved too expensive to run and Rix was forced to keep Let Sleeping Wives Lie on at the Garrick and transfer Uproar in the House, with Nicholas Parsons playing Rix's role, to the Whitehall. Stand By Your Bedouin went into storage. Let Sleeping Wives Lie enjoyed a further two-year run with Leslie Crowther, Elspet Gray, Derek Farr, Andrew Sachs and Rix playing the lead roles. After the first year, Rona Anderson took over from Gray.After Let Sleeping Wives Lie finished at the Garrick, it went on a short tour before opening for a summer season at the newly restored Playhouse in Weston-super-Mare. Rix played the first four weeks and then Leslie Crowther returned and played the last six. Meantime the cast of Rix's next West End production commuted by train every day to rehearse in London, returning in the late afternoon for their evening performance. She's Done It Again, opened at the Garrick to the best reviews Rix had ever enjoyed, but it had the shortest run of any of his productions to that date. Rix could never find an obvious reason for the production's short run, for the play enjoyed a sell-out tour after the Garrick. His favoured explanation was that the play, funny as it was, might have seemed somewhat old-fashioned, as it was adapted by Michael Pertwee from a pre-war farce, Nap Hand, by Vernon Sylvaine and based upon the birth of Dionne quintuplets.
Rix's next play, also by Pertwee, was Don't Just Lie There, Say Something! with Alfred Marks playing the libidinous government minister. Reviews were not as good as the previous play, but audiences kept coming and it ran for two years at the Garrick and then enjoyed another successful tour. Rix, who had never enjoyed touring, now hated the endless nights away from home, and was delighted when the play was turned first into a television series for HTV, Men of Affairs and then into a film. After that, during the Three-Day Week in 1973–74, came a relatively unsuccessful pantomime season in Robinson Crusoe at the New Theatre, Cardiff.
Rix was by now becoming tired of going on stage night after night, and sensing that he had reached the peak of his success, began to consider retiring from the stage. However, he performed in two more farces, A Bit Between the Teeth at the Cambridge Theatre and then, back at the Whitehall, Fringe Benefits. After 26 years of almost continuous performance in the West End, on 8 January 1977, Rix gave his final performance to a packed house at the Whitehall Theatre.